Should You Fear Death?

Because minds are brains, death should not be scary.

Many psychologists have asserted that people are heavily motivated by fear of their own mortality. This claim may well describe large numbers of people, not just Woody Allen, but is it normatively correct? Is it rational to fear death? How might this philosophical question be given an evidence-based answer?

It is still commonly believed that being rational is at odds with being emotional, but emotions such as fear can often be quite reasonable. For example, if a hurricane is predicted in the area in which you live, it is rational to fear the damage that can result, and evidence is accumulating to support fears about drastic declines in the environment resulting from climate change. On the other hand, fear about some potential event is irrational when there is no evidence that the event will actually threaten a person’s well-being. Developing a strong fear of the earth being hit by a huge asteroid is currently irrational because there is no evidence that an asteroid strike is imminent. Is death like the hurricane or like the asteroid strike?

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Epicurus constructed an argument against fearing death that has since become even more plausible: “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.” Epicurus was one of the first atomists who believed that everything consists of material entities and that there are no souls that survive death. If your life ends at death, then you have nothing to fear, because there will be no YOU to experience pleasure or pain. It’s all over when it’s over.

Of course, there are other aspects of dying that are worth fearing, such as disease, disability, and the distress of people who care about you. But from the philosophical perspective that there is no life after death, death itself is nothing to fear.

Especially in recent decades, evidence has mounted that Epicurus was right that minds are material processes rather than supernatural souls. Cognitiveneuroscience is rapidly developing experiments and theories that support the claim that the identification of mind and brain provides the best explanation of people’s capacities for perception, reasoning, language, and even consciousness. If the mind is just the brain, then there is no mind to experience suffering of any kind when the brain stops functioning at death. Hence Epicurus was right that there is nothing to fear. If there were any good evidence that life does survive death, then we would have to reject Epicurus’ conclusion, but phenomena such as near-death experiences and séances can easily be explained away.

The fear of death persists as a vestige of religious views that proclaim that life on earth is just a fragment of the existence of an eternal soul. Then religion becomes a solution to a problem that it has itself created: You may be able to decrease your fear of death by believing that you have found the right religion that will ensure that your afterlife will be pleasant. Thus religion allows a person to careen from the fear-driven inference that death is threatening to the motivated inference that it won’t be so bad in the afterlife. Of course, this inference assumes that you have picked the right religion.

If I believed that life survives death, then I would be terrified at the prospect of an eternity of suffering, because I would have no way of knowing which religious beliefs to adopt. In addition to the different main religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, there are many variants, including dozens of different versions of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. Guessing wrong could lead not only to problems in this life, but to eternal punishment. Moreover, it is entirely possible that the “right” religion hasn’t even been invented yet.

This variety is one of the flaws in Pascal’s famous wager that it is better to believe in God, because if religion turns out to be true, then you get eternal reward, instead of suffering eternal punishment. This wager assumes that you know what religion to bet on. In contrast, let me offer Thagard’s wager: it is better not to believe in God, because then you don’t have to suffer through a lifetime of worrying about death and the right religion! Happily, this wager fits perfectly with rapidly developing evidence that the mind is just the brain. Hence both inference to the best explanation and inference to the best plan support the conclusion that death should not be feared.

As fear of dying increases, the fear of any situation expected to predict death also increases, and fear is expessed even when the predictive value of a stimulus for death is low. Thus, fearfulness (timidity), and the fear of death, are very highly correlated. You are not going to find someone who has an above average fear of death and just average on other fears.

The fear of anxiety is different from the fear of death, as is he fear of embarrassment. The fear of anxiety is highly correlated with pain sensivity and with beliefs about the consequences of anxiety.

Discussions of the rationality of fear in psychology incorrectly assume that what a person is afraid of is injury/ death. Actually, many are afraid of the consequences of the fear, as in "I know heights are harmless but I will faint in the elevator on the way up." Such a fear is rational because the person very well might faint.

Those who say that religion is about the fear of death can't explain much about religion. Any idiot could invent a religion hat is much less frightening than what we have now. Religion both increeases fear, as in fearing God, and decreases it, as in afterlife.

NDE's cannot be easily explained away. Read Eben Alexander's book. People hear and see things that are accurate even though they are completely unconscious. Your understanding is extremely limited on the subject. Do some research before making foolish comments.

... who has come close to death quit a few times. Fear is overwhelming when you can see it coming and you think you're going to die. But when you survive you are 'pushed through the fire of fear', and you defeat your your instinct for self preservation, it causes you to grow in ways 99% of other people will never be able to experience.

The emotional makeup and nervous system sensitivity we inherit limits our understanding and frames our worldviews in ways that are not healthy for the world. Our natural emotions, the idea that 'normal people are healthy' while we poison and consume the planet for convenience is in fact probably one of human beings most agreed upon collective hallucination.

Most fear centers around status and likability in the eyes of others - i.e. trying to connect with others or trying to gain a lifestyle of material wealth, relationships or both.

Our emotional makeup and interpetations of the world is in turn constrained by our biological resources - how we behave towards others and ourselves is really a matter of physical processes we don't understand but cover up with ignorant language laden frameworks to attempt to talk about the features of the dark cave we call our perceptions and behaviors that we have little understanding of.

Most of our thoughts and ideas about things are skewed or outright divorced from how the laws of nature actually work. But it's too energy intensive, time consuming and stressful for most people to want to think clearly because they have other things competing for their time.

The reasoning seems sound but given that we humans don't really even understand how the physical universe works, let alone the implications of the likely existence of alternate realities within science and the weirdness of quantum physics, and on and on, in this case absence of proof isn't proof of absence. The belief that humans have no soul is just that, a belief. Its really no more valid or invalid than the belief that we're going to meet Jesus when we die. Both sides of this argument are striving so hard to use the tools at their disposal to prove their point. We just are not there yet. In order to prove the non-existence of the soul one would have to perform tests far beyond anything available to science. Its not good science or rational thought to insist that there is no soul based on scientific reasoning since such a thing cant be tested under laboratory conditions. Our place on this planet is not to fuss about what comes or doesn't come after we die but to live good lives, fully in the moment that we inhabit.

I'd say you are 100% correct in my view. There are other dimensions and planes of existence we aren't yet gifted too, and reasoning that life is only in the body of man, is wrong and it is NOT helpful to people like me who really want to move on.

The greatest mistake that I see in the field of psychology is there is reference made to Religion but nothin is said about a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
You see I have been trained and educated in the theories and ideologies of Psychology by some of the most learned men of such a brief field, and there is never any mention of the personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ but only to religion.
Religion is the false hood of man's invention to make things better and the practice of such things.
Having a personal relationship with Christ will change every person who has a real life changing experience, even the most determined of minds in the scientific field have been changed instantly by a power the science knows nothing about and like death wants to know nothing about. Just rememeber the best of minds crucified Christ thinking or at least wanting everyone to think He was a fraud, sound like science today?
I know what death is and I also know that I do not fear death simply because of the personal relationship that I have with God. Clearly it is not anything that I have done or have chosen to do but rather what God has allowed me to do. 99% of the people that I know and have known fear death and that is generally seen in their SOULS when they are about to die. Fear should be discussed regarding death and this fear needs to be resolved. Science and theories and ideologies will never accomplish anything and that is evident thru the centuries that this issue has existed.
Stranger things have baffled man and man explains it away with science. You see you who are of the scientific persuasion are no different than religion. Just as you have stated religion solves the problem about man and his fear of death and the same with science by saying the brain is the mind and when the brain is death then you are no more and there is nothing to fear.
Thanks for listening and reading this portion, I have no arguments only life changing experience that is experienced by thousands each and every day who have lived in fear, guiult, shame and sorrow but now have been set free.

I have never understood the reasoning that there's nothing to fear in death because you will become nothing, and feel nothing. I think to lose all my memories of loved ones and the knowledge and life experience I have gained is a horrible thought. If you truly believe that, what point do you see in living your life to the fullest? You will have no recollection and eventually everyone you knew won't either

I agree. For some of us, it's not the notion of dying, but the notion of not-being that is the concern. This has both good and bad ramifications though: On the good side - not being, and eventually, not even being remembered, in the long run, takes away some of the consequences of what you do when you're alive. On the other hand, I can't stomach the thought that I will not be , nor will I be aware that I am not being, and moreover, that my not being will go on for eternity. My 'self' does not want to not be, whether I am aware of it or not. In the meantime, before this happens, I reach out to the future by writing music or books or whatever I can create that can be left behind, as a bit of my 'self'. But even Beethoven's 9th will not 'be' at some point in the future.

That was my first thought as well, but after sitting for more than 15 minutes doing nothing I couldn't stand it. I will be here for some time so I might as well do something, I will laugh in the face of this absurd world and carry on.

I'm really sad I do not believe we just die and there is nothing we do live on death is not the end just a transformation you have not experienced the kingdom of heaven as I have then do not say death is the end it can not be proven by science but by many individuals that have

I've tried this line of countering Pascal's Wager, and the fallback is generic theism--as long as you believe in God (whatever your conception) you are ok. It is a curiously fond response of modern Christianity, whether from evangelicals who see it as a short jump from "born-again" conversion through mental assent, or from liberals who are busy downplaying theology anyway.
The typical logical response to the generic theism argument is that it makes unfounded assumptions about the character and desires of God (whoever he is). Making this point requires a fair amount of abstract thinking to see the forest for the trees so it is unworkable in most conversations.
A simpler response is to simply point out that every religion that believes there is a literal hell also makes exclusive claims for salvation. To put it differently, there does not exist a religion compatible with generic theism that also believes in a literal hell. No scriptures claim the only people in hell are atheists.

For having a PhD you are very narrow, and to me rather dull. Really glad I don't have to sit across the dinner table from you, or sleep with you. Or have any really meaningful conversation with you. Really awful, shallow, one sided article. Touché for free speech. I guess when you die your family can just pitch you out the car window at 60 right....naked because really according to you what difference does any of this make? Just so you know I was born into an incredibly selfish Atheist family, who's beliefs shoved down my throat from the age of
three did nothing to inhance my life thus far, I am 56. I consider myself a Mystic in training. I am glad I have educated myself on all kinds of beliefs, that I have read over two hundred books on life after death, spirit communication, near death experiences. Why did you even write this article? To claim to be the "only right way to think" your Little Self must be in full control of your life. I feel sorry for your patients. To me this article did nothing but perpetuate the exact fear you are trying to convince people not to have.

For having a PhD you are very narrow, and to me rather dull. Really glad I don't have to sit across the dinner table from you, or sleep with you. Or have any really meaningful conversation with you. Really awful, shallow, one sided article. Touché for free speech. I guess when you die your family can just pitch you out the car window at 60 right....naked because really according to you what difference does any of this make? Just so you know I was born into an incredibly selfish Atheist family, who's beliefs shoved down my throat from the age of
three did nothing to inhance my life thus far, I am 56. I consider myself a Mystic in training. I am glad I have educated myself on all kinds of beliefs, that I have read over two hundred books on life after death, spirit communication, near death experiences. And most of all i listen to God within, my very own heart. Why did you even write this article? To claim to be the "only right way to think" your Little Self must be in full control of your life. I feel sorry for your patients. To me this article did nothing but perpetuate the exact fear you are trying to convince people not to have.

I am not scared to die. Everybody dies. But I am afraid of the "eternal oblivion" as they say. We as humans cannot even comprehend non-existance. We cannot fathom the true meaning of "nothing". We can put a word and definition to it, but that in itself is a farce. I know there are a great number of things we cannot explain in this world. Answers that are not ours to know. But we are all still asking. I guess what I'm trying to say is: I hope this is not all, and that death is not the end, but if it is, its going to suck. And I wont even know that it sucks. Socrates said he didnt fear death because either way (afterlife or oblivion) he thought was fine. If oblivion, his conciousness wouldn't(couldn't) know he was dead, and if there was an afterlife, he could pick the brains of all the great philosophers of the past.
This scares me to know end. And I've already come to terms with going to Hell if there actually is one. If the heaven\hell religions are right, that is where I'm going and this is fine with me. But this oblivion... It makes me quake in my boots. I just hope that when she finds me, I'll be ready.

Hey why don't you start reading some new books on life after death, near death experiences, Spirit communication. A great first book could be Billy Fingers or My son and the After Life by Dr. Elisa Medus both books are excellent by very up standing folks. Also look through the site neardeath.com Kevin Williams site. Being open minded and choosing to educate yourself on a different subject empowers a person. I am as glad as hell the Dr that wrote this article isn't my parent. Hopefully he didn't have kids at all. A complete ass in my mind. I wonder how often he tells his patients to just go out and do in life what ever you want because when you die the party is over. The Dr. Needs a smack.

I will briefly recap what I know. I think therefore I am. I believe in what I can see touch measure. That is the scientist In me. I understand basic physics.

However, what happened to me when I was 12 happened in broad daylight with an adult witness a teenage witness and 2 dogs that I had known for years.

Something walked through me. What to this day I know not. It was out front of an ordinary terraced house in the UK. I had been raised in a particularly unreligious manner. No church, no story's of sky gods from parent's. I was science kid.

When it fluttered in a few feet to my right and towards me the dogs dropped on their front paws and backed off scowling. They had never ever behaved in this manner. The coordination of their behaviour alone tells my adult mind they saw it fully.

By the time I turned to see what it was it was at me and through me though truth be told I never recall anything the other side of me.

I screamed so loud my mother came bolting out of my house next door to where I was, she thought I had been hit by a car. She had to sit with me every night for a week because I was terrified.

I am a rational man. This was no group hallucination. There was no structure around me, it was broad bloody daylight on a summers evening and there are whitnesses of differing ages and species.

So what have I learned?
When ever a prick with a PhD claims a certainty, walk away.

Id like to hear more about your experience.. i have had similar things happen to me and i cannot explain them to this very day. I am a rational person and i am completely sane. What happened to me is just as unexplainable as your occurrence..

Hell yeah, man. That's an amazing story. I am a science minded skeptic, but still open minded. This guy who wrote this article is obviously a close minded athiest. The article is actually very elementary and I'm surprised is in Psychology Today.

To many unexplained things happen over a life time. Talk to little children when they are about 3 years old and they will tell you things straight from the heart that will make you believe there is more. My very first memories were the same as their stories.
Then there is the question as to why we wake up in the middle of the night, look at the clock, knowing something is wrong with a relative who is nowhere near us and find out the relative passed away at the exact time you awoke.
I could continue but don't want to write a book on here as of all the scenarios people have of what happens when we die.

While I agree on the "Fearing death makes no sense"-part, I still disagree on the flawed brain logic:

There is no - and probably will never be - nil proof of the fact that

"your being/mind is a material existance".

To this date, our scientists have not moved forward a single step in analysing crucial workings of the brain.
Everyone still comparing the bain to a PC is absolutely misguided.

Even if they were ever able to prove that the brain is linked to your conciousness...
... who is to say it is not simply acting as an interpreter ? Much like your PC Screen translates data into images ?

This is such a complicated subject and the author simply saying fear not a dark eternity as a brick wall, hardly makes me at age 72, not fear death. As long as I am a sentient being that has lived, loved and learned over a life time, how should I feel about my entire being swallowed back into an unconscious Universe. I am hardly looking forward to death as it seems to a rational mind, to bring forth a conscious being and then in a flash reduce that being to nothing, just doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. What it does is anger that the Universe should be and even reach such a cruel situation of producing a sentient being such as man and then burn him back to ashes.

Do you let threats of eternal torment in Hell dominate your life? There is a way out.
God is a just God. What did God take away from you that He didn't give you, therefore, being a just God, that He owes you back? He owes you back your previous eternal nonexistence. At your Judgement before Him, if you want it, ask for your eternal nonexistence back. God, being a just God, will give you your eternal nonexistence back. Then, you will never suffer again.

I have thought about this isn't everything not going to exist in billions and billions of years away because it will all reset but if it does reset does that mean wen we start remembering stuff when we are four does that mean that we will all experience our life starting from four again when it all resets

I read this article because I hoped to find comfort in my fear. But this article just made my fear of death much worse! It seems Paul missed the fact that many of us are afraid of nothingness. I hear this over and over again. "If there is nothing after death, then you won't feel anything, so there's nothing to fear." However, thats exactly the scenario that has made me so sick. I can no longer live my life because I have lost my faith. Science tells us that we are supposed to think rational and stop believing in a soul. But that just leaves us as biological machines that are just gonna wither away.

Thank you Paul, and thank you science! Now the world is just a cold and unforgiving place.

Btw, I'm a biologist so I also feel these opinions are not very common among my peers.

Hi Michael, your post makes me so sad. Please scroll up and find my response to this asinine article under I don't Fear Death about ten above by Hunter. I am a Mystic, Saint Francsis Hospice Volunteer, and I have made it my life's passion to study death, where we were before birth, where we go after our bodies die. After reading over 500 books by many PHds on the subject i know for a fact we do have a Soul and our experience on Earth is temporary. I too read this article thinking it might be comforting, this man will be scared shitless on his deathbed. There are hundreds of books that prove that our spirit energy exists after our dense material earth costume wears out. If you are interested I will send you a list of fascinating reading on the subject of life after death. You can find me on FB under Kincaid Focker Penobscott. Please don't listen to this cold hard ass he's just like my atheist hard ass grandfather who by the way threw a fork at my mother after he died in my grand mother's kitchen. He was probably pissed to see that he wasent dead at all and was going to have to pay for his increadbly selfish life in Earth School. There are ten thousand stories that completely counter with what this coward has to say. Common move on into the light of truth. You don't need to be religious to study life after death. Science, and Spirituality can coexist they are supposed to. Just because we can't see oxygen doesn't mean it isn't there. Open your mind, heart, and intellect. Peace

Hi Michael, your post makes me so sad. Please scroll up and find my response to this asinine article under I don't Fear Death about ten above by Hunter. I am a Mystic, Saint Francsis Hospice Volunteer, and I have made it my life's passion to study death, where we were before birth, where we go after our bodies die. After reading over 500 books by many PHds on the subject i know for a fact we do have a Soul and our experience on Earth is temporary. I too read this article thinking it might be comforting, this man will be scared shitless on his deathbed. There are hundreds of books that prove that our spirit energy exists after our dense material earth costume wears out. If you are interested I will send you a list of fascinating reading on the subject of life after death. You can find me on FB under Kincaid Focker Penobscott. Please don't listen to this cold hard ass he's just like my atheist hard ass grandfather who by the way threw a fork at my mother after he died in my grand mother's kitchen. He was probably pissed to see that he wasent dead at all and was going to have to pay for his increadbly selfish life in Earth School. There are ten thousand stories that completely counter with what this coward has to say. Common move on into the light of truth. You don't need to be religious to study life after death. Science, and Spirituality can coexist they are supposed to. Just because we can't see oxygen doesn't mean it isn't there. Open your mind, heart, and intellect. Peace

Hi Kincaid. You are so kind. I really want to believe, but I have a hard time. All the stuff that I have read has just exchanged my faith with fear. I would like to pm you on facebook, but I can't find you? I you wan't you can find me as Michael Straarup Nielsen. im the guy with the hat on.

I've been there...on and off most of my life. It's called existential depression. And it sucks. And people who don't have it canNOT understand. It's the void we fear, not the process of dying or hell, or anything else. I have never been convinced that materialism (or atomism, as this author calls it) does not naturally and unavoidably lead to nihilism. You can't get meaning out of a meaningless universe.
My advice is this...I know it's hard, but don't read stuff like this. It will start a downward spiral. Also, look for things that trigger it. Watching certain movies always did it to me (like The Matrix). Next, if it gets really bad, go see your doctor and ask for a **therapeutic** dose of anti-depressants. Not a full dose. And just until you feel okay for a few months straight. Then wean back off. Finally, think about this. Materialism teaches us that we have no free will. It also teaches us there is no such thing as objective right and wrong, or love (just chemicals in the brain). Ask yourself what your gut tells you...do you have free will? Do you think some things *are* objectively right or wrong? Do you love and/or feel loved? Does it feel like a meaningless trick of evolution or something more? Ultimately, the only thing we can be sure of in this life is our own consciousness. Trust that first and only trust things that contradict your first-person experience when they can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. And it's highly unlikely science will ever prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the mind is nothing but the brain. At most, they are likely to prove correlation. Here are some sources I've found helpful:

Religious:
Richard Swinburne (the mind-brain problem)
John Lennox (general reasoning and logic)
Rabbi Lawrence Keleman (great, and funny, YouTube video on argument for God's existence)
JP Moreland (he uses evolution to *support* his theories, which is different than a lot of apologists)

All of these guys have some great speeches or talks on YouTube. Check them out whenever you feel yourself starting to feel bad about this. I hope it helps. You're not alone. I still have tough moments, but for the most part, I'm past it. Honestly, you don't have to believe in a specific *something* (and I don't)...you just have to believe that materialism is false and that consciousness is something more than an illusion. If you can do that, then it naturally follows that consciousness is likely to have some sort of role in our universe, which means it likely survives bodily death.

And to the author and militant materialists out there...think before you argue with people like this. Try to understand that this is not religious zealots trying to wield religion as a weapon, but regular human beings struggling with very serious questions that largely affect their ability to function in the world. Existential depression is extremely difficult to treat and very serious. Your philosophical posturing is not helping anyone but yourself in feeling superior.

I myself am really scared of dying or if you like Death. The fact that I wont exist anymore for eternity and the fact that those close to me fills me with dread and despair. OK thats me.
I was born into a family where my father was a fundamental atheist.
All the time my father and I would argue over the possibility that ultimately there was a loving personal God. The arguments would get very heated.
My father would make statements like, "I will be glad when I am off this "fucking" ball of clay". When he was well he would constantly say "I do not fear death".
Well when you got to his late seventies , he suffered a stroke which by the way did not effect his intellectual mind.
While he was in a Hospital I would try to visit him as much as possible. He still would want to argue with me that basically there was no meaning or purpose to life and expressing his desire of lack of fear of Death.
Well I was there at his bedside when a had a heart attack and I recall the staff coming to his bedside, with the equipment to stop him from going into the final state. Then I looked into his eyes. What did I see? Total and utter fear. Yes Mr Psychologist, with your know all bullshit, when you face that moment of ultimate annihilation of the self, let me know if you have no fear.
My father was a career soldier in the British Army for 18 years and fought in the Second World war and then Palestine. He proclaimed all his life that he did not fear death. I was privileged to see a moment where I knew he feared it as much as I do.

Quote from your interesting article, phenomena such as near-death experiences and séances can easily be explained away.

You’ve obviously never worked in a mortuary!! Our most recent experience was the chapel of rest door unlocking itself and opening repeatedly. We managed to slip into a conversation with the family ‘Did she have any phobias?’ And yes, she was claustrophobic.

Many, many other incidents, such as a three year old boy asking us if we could stop grandpa coming through his bedroom wall to sit on his bed each night. A young French boy picking out the record his grandpa wanted according to his Will, from a massive collection of LPs at his home, which the boy had rarely visited. Many other examples.